A couple of weeks ago, I posted the first part of this devotional topic. For those of you who are regular readers of mine, you know that God has placed a burden on my heart to teach Christian discipleship as a means to help others to reach a deeper, richer, more fuller faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Back in January, I began to think about the things in my own life that have held me back from true spiritual growth. What I came up with were things that not only kept me from spiritual growth but kept me from enjoying the fullness of my faith.
The first post of this series was on January 17th and covered two areas of Christian life that can become spiritual stumbling blocks for younger Christians. These were:
- We are tempted to return to our old lifestyle
- We are not obedient in following the Lord Jesus Christ in baptism
Any one of these two can stop our spiritual growth in its tracks. Unfortunately, there are a lot more things that can keep us from true spiritual growth and from my experience, rarely is it just one area of our life that keeps us from enjoying spiritual growth and the richness of fellowship we can have with the Lord Jesus Christ. As I mentioned in the first devotional of this series, there are several things that keeps us from having the spiritual growth we should want to have.
We do not have an active and meaningful prayer life:
When I first accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, I didn’t understand the importance of prayer. Sure, the first church I attended, First Baptist Church of Perkinston, had a great pastor and Sunday school teachers, but for someone who did not grow up in a Christian home, the only real model for prayer I really had been from Sunday morning services when I began regularly attending and what was demonstrated on Wednesday night. Sure, the television offered the world’s version of prayers which was often done with a mocking, ridiculing attitude. It was not until sometime in 1997 that I really began to understand what God wants for our prayer life. During a devotional reading, I came across this passage: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him (Matthew 6:6-8).
What I noticed was that God does not want Christians to have a “canned” prayer life. He does not want us to say the same prayers over and over. He does not want our prayers to be memorized and recited as many of us had to recite Shakespeare for our high school English classes. Our prayer must include our heartfelt praise for God, as even Paul and Silas demonstrated: And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them (Acts 16:25). We all know the story – out of their praise and prayers, God lifted them up. God delivered them. How many times in my own life have I called upon God and failed to give him the praise and honor; even in my distress, God has been there to deliver me, to bless me, and instead of showing gratitude through prayer, I acted like it was His “divine duty” to rescue me. When we use canned prayers, our prayers will contain canned praise. Our praise is then no longer from our hearts.
Continued on next page.
